Enterprise organizations and the data analysts they employ face the challenge of finding useful information in the increasing amounts of data generated and collected by these organizations over time. Such “big data” may provide, for example, valuable insights into the organization's operational performance and business patterns associated with various parts of the organization. For example, accessing computer networks of a business enterprise and transmitting electronic communications across these networks generates massive amounts of data. Such data generated by machines may include, for example, Web logs of activity occurring at various web servers distributed across an enterprise's network.
Analysis of this data can indicate patterns in consumer behavior with respect to the particular products or brands in which consumers may be interested during a given period of time. Such pattern analysis also may be helpful in differentiating normal operational performance from anomalies. For example, the detection of unusual patterns can allow a system analyst to investigate the circumstances under which these unusual patterns emerged and determine whether any issues exist that may pose a threat to the system's operational performance or security. Moreover, analysis of such data allows business enterprises to understand how their employees, potential consumers, and/or Web visitors use the company's online resources. Such analysis can therefore provide businesses with operational intelligence, business intelligence, and an ability to better manage their information technology (IT) resources. For instance, such analysis may enable a business to better retain customers, meet customer needs, and improve the efficiency and security of the company's IT resources.
However, data analysts or systems administrators of an enterprise may encounter significant challenges when attempting to identify, collect, and analyze such large quantities of data, which may be distributed across multiple data sources within the enterprise's network environment or IT infrastructure. Such challenges may prevent these enterprise users from realizing the potential value that this data may provide. In particular, patterns in the enterprise's data as a whole, which may provide valuable insight into the operations of the enterprise, may be difficult to find due in part to the size of this data and the fact that the underlying data produced by each data source within the enterprise is usually analyzed in isolation, if at all.